Electronic devices, including portable electronic devices, have gained widespread use and may provide a variety of functions including, for example, telephonic, electronic messaging, and other personal information manager (PIM) application functions. Portable electronic devices include, for example, several types of mobile stations such as simple cellular telephones, smart telephones, wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers with wireless 802.11 or Bluetooth capabilities.
Portable electronic devices such as PDAs or smart telephones are generally intended for handheld use and ease of portability. With continued demand for decreased size of portable electronic devices, electronic devices continue to decrease in size. Often these portable electronic devices include physical keypads (e.g., depressible keys, plastic keys, etc.) to input information such as data entry and display control. One benefit of a physical keypad is that it typically provides tactile feedback to a user. The tactile feedback from the keypad can be provided in a variety of ways including the use of one or more collapsible dome switches associated with or corresponding to one or more depressible keys of a keypad.
Smaller devices are generally desirable for portability. However, use of keypads that employ collapsible dome switches composed of metal may not overlap an antenna or antenna region of the electronic device because metal collapsible domes may interfere or reduce antenna performance. As a result, a keypad employing a metal collapsible dome is typically positioned away from the antenna and/or the antenna region resulting in an electronic device having a larger dimensional envelope or size.